I decided to spend on extra day at the pre-party, which was awesome. I flew in on Monday and participated in the Kayak event as well as all the other wonderful party activities. Thanks to Doro for all she does for our entire 70,000 tons community every year.

Also it was great meeting and hanging out with Aaron Copeland, who did all the descriptions this year. We are planning to continue our collaboration for 2019 and are looking forward to continuing to work together.

Also recruited a random roommate this year, Nathan, who was awesome to hangout with for the cruise and it worked out as well or better then I could have expected!

Also everything went pretty smoothly with the app this year, not perfect...improvements will continue, but both Android and iOS appeared to work very well for everyone this year.

I even got to do an interview with 70,000tons.TV. Not sure if/when it will be published, but hopefully it will be used sometime in the run up to 2019!

Thanks to Andy and the entire UMC crew as well as all the folks they bring with them!

I also got to share my project Absolute Darkness with a lot of people. If you like Death/Thrash check us out on Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, etc, etc....

I talked to a ton of people this year, old friends from previous years, as well as lot of new people. It was awesome to hang out with everyone and I had a blast and I believe everyone else did as well. Being able to contribute to such an awesome community is something I love to do.

For next year I have a list of things I want to do.

Here are my must do

* Fix Android crash when clicking on non band events (Skippers Thanks You, All Star Jam, etc)* Revamp the backend to support both 13:00 and 1:00pm time formats* Revamp alerts to prevent duplicate alerts on iOS* Revamp alerts to prevent issues and improve the backend of Android

Here is my might do ( these are big and time consuming, so we will see )

* Add feature to help track what shows you have attended, what were 1 and 2 setters. Have an after cruise sharing feature for social media that would allow to publish your list. * Revamp the UI. I have discussed with a graphic artist coming up with a better looking UI that she would design and I would implement. This would be a lot of work, especially since I would have to implement it twice (once for iOS and once for Android) so we will see how that goes.

If anyone has any feedback, let me know. My goal is to deliver a stable and useful tool every year.

If I have one ask from the 70,000 tons community it is for QA help, especially with Android. Also, the software is open source, so if you are an experienced Android, or iOS developer and would like to contribute to the project please reach out to me.

Glad this worked out on Android this year. I just wanted to bring up two things that I think you caught but if I can help identify anything at all:

- Aeternam and Gyze showed up as the same time on Day 2. Not sure if that was a data entry error or if 1300/1500 shows up at a weird time on the app.

- Weird glitch, but I noticed I kept getting weird notification timings. I didn't take a screenshot, but I'd often check my phone fifteen minutes (my reminder time) before a show to see a notification telling me that 1h-1day ago (this varied wildly), that show was happening in 15 minutes (as opposed to the notification going off "Just now" or "10 minutes ago"). Example, I checked my phone at 2:00 before Insomnium's 2:15 set, and my phone was telling me that the "Insomnium has a show in 15 minutes" message had gone off an hour ago.

Phoenix wrote:Glad this worked out on Android this year. I just wanted to bring up two things that I think you caught but if I can help identify anything at all:

- Aeternam and Gyze showed up as the same time on Day 2. Not sure if that was a data entry error or if 1300/1500 shows up at a weird time on the app.

- Weird glitch, but I noticed I kept getting weird notification timings. I didn't take a screenshot, but I'd often check my phone fifteen minutes (my reminder time) before a show to see a notification telling me that 1h-1day ago (this varied wildly), that show was happening in 15 minutes (as opposed to the notification going off "Just now" or "10 minutes ago"). Example, I checked my phone at 2:00 before Insomnium's 2:15 set, and my phone was telling me that the "Insomnium has a show in 15 minutes" message had gone off an hour ago.

Yea, working on the notifications will be a priority. Also, the next time I do a substantial release I will release a ‘Test Plan’ that I will ask cruisers to run through and report issues against. There were apparently some bugs that only occurred when people had there phones set to use the 13:00 time format, and other issue I would had a hard time catching just testing myself. The ‘Aeternam and Gyze’ issue looks right on my phone, so I suspect it may be a 13:00 versus 1:00pm issue with how your phone is configured. Weird, but will be fixed for next year.

Thanks for the feedback and if we can get a group of people to donate a couple of hours a release to pre-cruise testing through out the year when I make changes, we can catch these issues we’ll ahead of the cruise next time!

The 70K Bands app was working fine on Google Pixel 2 XL when running on android 7.0 however as I have upgraded to android 8.1 today as I open the app it only loads a blank white screen on startup and crashes itself automatically. Any solution?

bikasgupta wrote:The 70K Bands app was working fine on Google Pixel 2 XL when running on android 7.0 however as I have upgraded to android 8.1 today as I open the app it only loads a blank white screen on startup and crashes itself automatically. Any solution?

Not that I am aware of, this is the first I am hearing of it. I will investigate. I was planning on a few new releases that will be compiled with the latest SDK. Let me see if I can reproduce within a virtual machine Android device using the google SDK and the phone and Android version specified. If I can reproduce the issue, I can likely solve it pretty easily.

Give me about 2 weeks and let's see if I can find, fix, and post a release. Luckily there is not much happening 70,000 Tons wise at the moment...but that will change.

Ok, I have reset the app in anticipation of announcements hopefully coming at some point in the proverbial 'sooon.....'

Please keep in mind this is an unofficial app and I have no inside information as to when announcement will actually be made. If you want to see 2018 data, just use the 'Use Last Years' data feature within the app.

slayergeek wrote:Ok, I have reset the app in anticipation of announcements hopefully coming at some point in the proverbial 'sooon.....'

Please keep in mind this is an unofficial app and I have no inside information as to when announcement will actually be made. If you want to see 2018 data, just use the 'Use Last Years' data feature within the app.

Does this mean I can delete the band-logo images that appear in my phone's picture gallery from the app? I wasn't sure if it was "safe" to delete them if the app was depending on them.

slayergeek wrote:Ok, I have reset the app in anticipation of announcements hopefully coming at some point in the proverbial 'sooon.....'

Please keep in mind this is an unofficial app and I have no inside information as to when announcement will actually be made. If you want to see 2018 data, just use the 'Use Last Years' data feature within the app.

Does this mean I can delete the band-logo images that appear in my phone's picture gallery from the app? I wasn't sure if it was "safe" to delete them if the app was depending on them.

Unless you lack network connectivity, it is always safe to delete these. If they don’t exist, I download them again. I will make a second attempt to block these from being index by the picture viewer in the next release. The theory was I had already done that, but apparently not from the bug reports.

Pellaz wrote:Does this mean I can delete the band-logo images that appear in my phone's picture gallery from the app? I wasn't sure if it was "safe" to delete them if the app was depending on them.

Unless you lack network connectivity, it is always safe to delete these. If they don’t exist, I download them again. I will make a second attempt to block these from being index by the picture viewer in the next release. The theory was I had already done that, but apparently not from the bug reports.

Okay, cool.

And don't stress about it too much. The US Postal Service's "Informed Delivery" app kindly sends TWENTY images of any incoming mail envelope to my picture gallery. I guess they want us to be extra-informed.

Pellaz wrote:This is for Apple/iPhones only, not Android (yet), right?

Yep. This is a free project that I am doing on my own, I am not a company or trying to make money. If any Andriod developer wants to make a similar app, I will help them out where I can, but this is not something I would do on my own at this point.

Has anyone offered to do this? I'd be happy to help move the app to Xamarin, in which case it would work on Andriod/iOS and also Windows devices.

Pellaz wrote:This is for Apple/iPhones only, not Android (yet), right?

Yep. This is a free project that I am doing on my own, I am not a company or trying to make money. If any Andriod developer wants to make a similar app, I will help them out where I can, but this is not something I would do on my own at this point.

Has anyone offered to do this? I'd be happy to help move the app to Xamarin, in which case it would work on Android/iOS and also Windows devices.

It's already on Android and iOS, granted using different code for the native architectures (Swift and Java Android). The post you replied to is likely very old, as I have had an Android version for the cruise the last 2 years.

Don't see much point in porting to Windows, as even Microsoft has abandon the Windows Phone OS. If you want to assist with the Android using Java or iOS using swift, that would be much better.

I'm not saying I'm not interested, but my Java is basically knowing it's C# and I know nothing about Swift. A windows port would run on Windows 10 as well as Windows tablets. It would also be a unified code base......

I just released the first pass at the 2019 version of the 70K Bands app. This is the un-official iPhone and Android app for the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise, serving survivors for 4 years as of the 2019 sailing. Here are the changes so far.

* Now supports both 24hour and AM/PM Time formats. Inherits system wide settings* Made alerts generation and other background tasks more reliable and less prone to missing or duplicate alerts on the ship* Made changes to backend files* Changed from Day of Week, to Day Of Event for schedule view* Made improvement to pull to refresh UI

Hopefully tomorrow I will release a QA walkthrough for volunteers to go through. Since the onboard changes only see real world use 4 days a year, I would love some help testing these features. The earlier we catch issues the better.

If you want to test, please be sure of the follow, available at the preference screen

iOS users should have version 201806091 ( released today )Android users should have version 220180608

To file a bug report, send me a Facebook message and be sure to include the follow

iOS or AndroidYour version of iOS or AndroidDescription of the problemStep to reproduce

Here is a walkthrough of what I would like you guys to go through. Feel free to deviate, but this would be a great start.

* Turn on ‘Use Last Years” data in the preferences section. It’s available via the icon in the upper right. This will shutdown the app* Relaunch the app* A schedule based on last year’s run list will display. The list will vary depending upon the content of the master file, but I will try and make sure I rework the master file so that we are always on the cruise during the testing cycle. * Ensure that the schedule ‘looks’ right. You should see all the expected bands and shows, based on your filters. * Check to ensure pull to refresh works as expected. * Force quit the app. Go into air plane mode. Restart the app. Ensure all works well while offline.* Check to ensure pull to refresh works as expected while offline. Will be quicker because we are not downloading data. * Modify the must, might, won’t, unknown filters and verify the correct display of data* Swipe left on a band, ensure you can set the must, might, won’t, unknown preferences * Click the ‘Filters’ menu in the left. Ensure that the filters here have the expected effect on the list of events displayed. * Force quite the app, ensure all filters and settings persist* Allow the app for several hours to send you expected alerts based on your preferences and you band likes and dislikes. Did you get the expected alerts? Did you get the alerts at the expected time?* Change your ‘Alert preferences’ in the settings section. Wait a few more hours, ensure you only get the expected alerts. * Be sure you are online. Click on a band. Ensure the details page looks correct and all links take you to the expected places* Modify the description of a band. Was it saved if you exit and renter the screen. Was it saved when you force quite and renter the app* Delete the description, go back to the main list, go back into the band. Was the empty description replaced with the default detailed description. * Remove ‘Use Last Years’ data while there might still be alerts to send. Restart app after the app quits. * No more alerts should happen after removing last year’s data. Wait long enough to ensure no alerts happen.

Great news everyone, a major feature for 2019 is being made available today!

This new feature allows you to indicate what shows you attended on the ship. You can do this by swiping left on the main list view and selecting the ticket icon (or runner/mosher on older Android phones). You can also do this by clicking on the event text in the details screen when you click on a band!

Please let me know if you spot any issues. If you want to explore these new features before the schedule is announced a few days before the cruise, go into Preferences and click 'Use Last Years Data'. You will still receive announcements when bands are announced.

Ok everyone. I am proud to announce the latest version of 70K Bands while hanging out aboard the Majesty of The Seas on my Cuba trip vacation. 70k Bands in the unofficial iPhone and Android app for the 70,000 Tons Of Metal cruise.

This version, for the first time, allows you to declare what shows you intend to attend as soon as the schedule is released.

You can use these new features in one of two ways.

1) I just want to decide what events to go to as the day progresses, fuck planning it all out ahead of time.

This works well for this purpose. Just set the filter how you want, maybe hide Wont See for example, or go to filters and hide the Lounge if you hate to see shows there or whatever you want. You can set shows as ‘Attended’ as you see them for your after cruise report, or not. Up to you which features you want to take advantage of.

2) I want to plan my whole cruise out when the schedule it release!Just go through all the events and mark which shows you plan to attend. (Be sure and leave meal breaks)Click the ‘Ticket’ icon to hide all shows except the ones you marked as ‘Will Attend’, this will disable all other filters. Just click again to return to the normal viewGo into Preferences (the gear icon) and select the option ‘Alert Only for Will Attend Events’

There will be no more features releases this year, but I will work quickly to fix any bugs discovered.

Please check out the full app using the ‘Use Last Years Data’ and help me test everything out. I would much rather fix issues now, then have anybody disappointed come February. I will post an updated QA Walk Through sometime soon for those that want to help.

Last edited by slayergeek on Tue Jul 03, 2018 6:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Awesome new features! You know, with all the time we have between cruises, you could develop this into a full-blown real time strategy game... 70K simulator!

“Oh no, you forgot to eat for two days! Your stamina is dropping fast!”“You drank too much! You’re missing your next three shows.”“This cute photographer is inviting you to hook up, but your favorite band plays soon, and you already missed their first show...”

I need everyone’s help to QA and test out the app before the cruise, especially with all the new features addd this year. The main schedule features of this app is only used in the real world for 4 days a year, so I need as many people as possible to test it before hand.

I have developed a QA walkthrough, this is an improved version broken up into different sections. Feel free to deviate from this, but I think this is a good place to start.

Also for my non English speaking users, feel free to report translation issues. Some of the translations are google translate, so they are suspect. Please include the exact old text, your proposed new text and the language it is in.

When reporting a bug. Be as specific as possible, and include screen shots if applicable. I need to be able to reproduce an issue in order to resolve it.

Keep in mind, if you don’t report an issue until the day before the cruise, there is little chance it can be fixed.

Godflesh wrote:Awesome new features! You know, with all the time we have between cruises, you could develop this into a full-blown real time strategy game... 70K simulator!

“Oh no, you forgot to eat for two days! Your stamina is dropping fast!”“You drank too much! You’re missing your next three shows.”“This cute photographer is inviting you to hook up, but your favorite band plays soon, and you already missed their first show...”

Godflesh wrote:Awesome new features! You know, with all the time we have between cruises, you could develop this into a full-blown real time strategy game... 70K simulator!

“Oh no, you forgot to eat for two days! Your stamina is dropping fast!”“You drank too much! You’re missing your next three shows.”“This cute photographer is inviting you to hook up, but your favorite band plays soon, and you already missed their first show...”

That pretty funny, I might do that.

The goal of course would be to see as many of the shows you intended to, as we all struggle with.Worst play: “You meet Scott Ian drunk at the Casino bar, and he decides to tell you all about poker tournaments. You lose two days.”

Jokes aside, I promise to do my best to test the new features. I keep my history on the boat in a spreadsheet, and I found it’s VERY important to record your attendance at shows RIGHT AFTER.I use “nope/disappointed/good/great” as a scale.Would you consider adding such a show rating feature?

Godflesh wrote:Awesome new features! You know, with all the time we have between cruises, you could develop this into a full-blown real time strategy game... 70K simulator!

“Oh no, you forgot to eat for two days! Your stamina is dropping fast!”“You drank too much! You’re missing your next three shows.”“This cute photographer is inviting you to hook up, but your favorite band plays soon, and you already missed their first show...”

That pretty funny, I might do that.

The goal of course would be to see as many of the shows you intended to, as we all struggle with.Worst play: “You meet Scott Ian drunk at the Casino bar, and he decides to tell you all about poker tournaments. You lose two days.”

Jokes aside, I promise to do my best to test the new features. I keep my history on the boat in a spreadsheet, and I found it’s VERY important to record your attendance at shows RIGHT AFTER.I use “nope/disappointed/good/great” as a scale.Would you consider adding such a show rating feature?

Thanks for testing! The more people to look at it and report potential issues the better. Thanks!

Maybe. It’s get harder and harder to add new features and still have a clean and intuitive UI. If I can figure out a way to added it in a sane way, then sure. Won’t happen this year though. My goal at this point is only to release stability fixes and any new major fixes won’t be until 2020.

Godflesh wrote:Awesome new features! You know, with all the time we have between cruises, you could develop this into a full-blown real time strategy game... 70K simulator!

“Oh no, you forgot to eat for two days! Your stamina is dropping fast!”“You drank too much! You’re missing your next three shows.”“This cute photographer is inviting you to hook up, but your favorite band plays soon, and you already missed their first show...”

"Service in the dining room was too slow -- you miss a show!""You have to go to Guest Services and the line is forever! Lose two shows!""You foolishly ate three slices of...something that's almost pizza...from Sorrento's! Lose two shows due to nausea; three if you have a low constitution rating!" "Metalhead needs food badly!"

Godflesh wrote:I just realized that if I switch to last year’s data, I might miss the “imminent” announcement. Would I?

Nope. Even in the ‘Last Years Data’ mode, you will get the push notification.

Now if you open up the app, you won’t see the band listed until you turn that mode off, but your phone will receive and display the announcement notification.

Cool beans. Your app is now the most important app in the world for the next few days, for a lot of people.

The first announcement will be challenging. If they change the format or there are any issues I may have to manually intervene. I am trying to stay on top of things and will try and make sure announcements go out ASAP.

App beta works well on S8 ,once full last years data was added I could easily choose show perfence and then see what I choose as must,maybe and no.Turned off last year’s data hoping to get the news today that something had finally happened,well no!

My wishlist 2019 A band just one band before Christmas!2012-14 Survivor2015-16 Abandoned Ship 2017 Returned2018 Got a bad feeling about this Abandon Ship 2019 This is Fucking Ridiculous

deathmetalpat wrote:App beta works well on S8 ,once full last years data was added I could easily choose show perfence and then see what I choose as must,maybe and no.Turned off last year’s data hoping to get the news today that something had finally happened,well no!

I didn't see any big issue on iOS at first glance, but I haven't gone through the scenario list yet.The only small issue I've noticed is that when you open the app on current data, it says "2 bands" for the placeholder message, until you refresh the page, then it says "1 band".

deathmetalpat wrote:App beta works well on S8 ,once full last years data was added I could easily choose show perfence and then see what I choose as must,maybe and no.Turned off last year’s data hoping to get the news today that something had finally happened,well no!

For Android users, the latest version of the app (released earlier this week) now uses the custom ringtone that was previously an iOS exclusive. Hopefully this will help more clearly identify an announcement from a boring email or text :)